


Ripe

by eruthiel



Category: MarsCorp (Podcast)
Genre: Age Difference, Call me by your name, Dream Sex, Grooming, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Manipulative Relationship, Pre-Canon, Science Fiction, Teen Crush, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-17 06:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11846247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eruthiel/pseuds/eruthiel
Summary: A book, a conversation, a dream, and an awakening.





	Ripe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolfsmilch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfsmilch/gifts).



> This fic is a lot of things, including a response to the current CMBYN discourse. I'm a huge fan of the book, but this is about a predatory adult using it to groom a teenage victim, so like... stay away if you only deal in absolutes, I guess. Some knowledge of the plot is assumed, but all you need really need to know is covered in the fic.
> 
> I don't know about science, I only know about books. So they're lit nerds now. I will write them doing actual science at some point, honest... hope you enjoy! :)
> 
>  **Update:** Wolfsmilch made [this amazing moodboard,](http://smegandtheheads.tumblr.com/post/164956388383/headofscience-for-smegandtheheads-inspired-by) and Lothiriel84 made [this one,](http://smegandtheheads.tumblr.com/post/166378278303/lothiriel84-a-book-a-conversation-a-dream) I am so lucky!! Please please check them out, I love them both (the moodboards AND my friends) so much!!

"I think you'll like this one," whispered more like a warning than a promise. Colin rarely provided commentary on the cultural products he supplied, preferring to ask David for his thoughts once he'd finished with them. Initially, this routine questioning was a source of great anxiety for the boy. Colin's secret gifts from the culture department were still a new and mind-bendingly exciting part of his young and otherwise unhappy life, so he was desperate to avoid coming across as ungrateful or, worse, undeserving of the honour.

After the first quiz caught him unaware and tongue-tied, he gave twice the time and ten times the attention to studying his second novel, a notebook open on his knees and a pen between his teeth throughout. Before daring to return the book to his benefactor and face questioning – _How did it make you feel? Who was your favourite character? Why?_ – he revised harder than for any test at school. Most important was to make his brilliant insights seem casual and unrehearsed. He could only pray that Colin wouldn't press him too hard or, horrible thought, challenge any of his opinions; he was little short of a god to David, and the merest hint of disagreement or disapproval would have been apocalyptic.

In the end, Colin saw through his performance in seconds. He immediately seemed more concerned with soothing his protégé's nerves than finding out what he thought of the book. He expressed warm agreement to everything, and soon took the conversation back into his own hands, talking at length and with ease about themes and symbols and how "Of course, we have to understand it in the context of the planet on which it was written – they lived and thought very differently to your average modern Martian..." David felt relief like a gut-wrenching sickness leaving his body, and gratitude like a strange, soft excitement taking its place. Colin wasn't trying to catch him out, he realised. Colin just wanted him to learn and grow and realise his potential.

After that, David never felt anything but flattered when Colin asked him for his opinions. He even learned to be comfortable with disagreement and defending his own positions, so that their discussions started to flow more easily, often continuing until one or both was forced to hurry away to duties elsewhere on the base. Sometimes David would pretend to forget that he was expected somewhere else, just for a few more minutes with Colin. So what if he was late to class again? His growing self-confidence made it easier to invent excuses for his teachers and, more importantly, his parents. They still came down on hard on him, but he knew that they would be even angrier if they knew that the Head of Science was encouraging his 'unwholesome' obsession with foreign culture; worse, they might turn their anger on Colin, perhaps even take steps to prevent the two of them from meeting unsupervised.

David was happy to shoulder the burden of blame alone. He found that the more his parents and teachers berated with him, the less he cared. There was no punishment they, or anyone else, could inflict that would make him reconsider his arrangement with Colin; what had been a thrilling novelty was now the cornerstone of his sanity, the one secret joy to which he clung when things were at their most miserable, and he would gladly endure any torture in order to preserve it. There was even a part of him that revelled in persecution, spinning self-indulgent narratives of star-crossed martyrdom. Okay, they weren't lovers, and there was nothing _exactly_ in the rules to say they couldn't be friends – still, their exclusive, underground culture club carried an air of taboo which David found thrilling. The feeling of danger that came from indulging his habit, and the feeling of safety that Colin's friendship wrapped around him like a blanket – this, he knew, was worth any cost, no matter how high.

"I think you'll like this one." On second thoughts, perhaps not a warning, but an invitation – or a dare. David turned the book over in his hands. _Call Me By Your Name_ by André Aciman. From the blurb, it seemed to be another romance where one of the lovers was an adult, the other an adolescent. Colin had picked out a few of these for him since listening eagerly to his review of _Lolita_ , but this time, both characters were male.

By now, David knew enough history to ask the important questions. "Was this written in a time and place where it was socially acceptable to... what did they call it..? To _be gay?"_

Colin made a face. "Well, it's complicated, but yes. Sort of. The story itself is set... well, at a time of change, let's say."

That night, alone in his room, David laid the book gently on his pillow. He stared at it for a minute before getting up to root through his desk drawers. In the second one down, he found what he was looking for: a MarsCorp employee information pamphlet, distributed to every pupil of his age earlier this year, to squash any concerns they may have about their ongoing puberties and to correct any beginner's mistakes they might be making in their nascent sex lives. Printed on the front, in big yellow letters, were the words: 'A TIME OF CHANGE.'

He sat down on his bed and leafed through the pamphlet, as he sometimes did when troubled by feelings he didn't care to examine. It focused mainly on practical and medical concerns, such as how to avoid non-approved pregnancies, but there was a single page devoted to forming appropriate relationships with compatibles. This page was the main reason he had kept the pamphlet, long after his classmates had thrown theirs away. It emphasised the dangers of attachment, obsession and navel-gazing. Love, it said, could and should be cultivated in such a way as to serve the greater good, but when allowed to grow unchecked or in unsuitable places, it could easily become a harmful and disruptive distraction from one's duties. Like happiness, love was a means to an end – that end being, of course, the benefit of MarsCorp – but it was never, ever an end in itself. This was a very different view to the ones found in a lot of Earth books, especially the sort favoured by Colin.

There was nothing on this page, or anywhere else in David's education, to discourage love between two compatible men or two compatible women. The very idea was bizarre; he had only recently learned about its history on Earth, after Colin brought him a long novel about an aristocrat disowned by her family for loving women. That particular book had left him baffled and heartbroken at the suffering wrought by this alien, almost comically arbitrary law of compatibility. When he'd expressed his surprise and sadness to Colin, he'd been met with a curious smile and a question: "Do you think they'd say the same about our system?"

David put the pamphlet back in its drawer, which he then closed as quietly as possible, just in case one of his parents was passing by in the corridor. Finally he crawled into bed, hunched over the book, and gazed down again at the front cover. It bore a picture of a fruit in warm but faded shades of orange. As a fan of Earth vegetation, David recognised it as a peach, now extinct, but he was keenly aware that knowing its name did not mean he knew what it _was_ – that is, what it must have meant to the first readers of this book, the ones to whom this cover illustration was addressed.

Consuming Earthling culture had taught David that, though some of them wrote in an English very similar to that spoken at MarsCorp, they also leaned heavily on a vague language of allusions and connotations and hidden meanings. It was like... puns, but multiplied by a million. When Martians talked about meat, for example, at most they might be making a joke about their genitals, but when Earthlings talked about meat, it could be a reference to... well, to just about anything, depending on context. And they expected you to keep up with this game as a matter of course. It was a delightful challenge which sometimes made David want to bash his head against a wall. He was more than willing to play, but he was missing so much of the rulebook still; even if he managed to piece it together from every scrap of material in the Culture Department, it would only ever be his second language.

At least he could tell at once that this peach was meant to suggest _something._ That was a start. He'd eaten peach flavoured sweets, but never anything like this. It was whole, it was round, it was alive – it was still on the branch – that had to be suggestive of good things, right? Or was it meant to make him think about its imminent decay? He knew that fruit in its natural state would turn rancid if not consumed within a brief window of edibility. A sense of urgency came upon him, an anxious need to pick this two-dimensional peach and eat it before its perfection turned to decline.

Another snippet about fruit came unexpectedly to mind, a rhyme from another romance Colin had procured for him: 'When apples are ripe and ready for plucking, girls of sixteen are ready for fucking.' This in turn reminded him of the advice given by Colin when David expressed his frustration with the layered meanings of Earthlings' words: "When in doubt, just assume they're talking about sex. At the end of the day, that's almost always part of it." David couldn't help but smirk, and resolved to find out for himself how true it really was.

He transferred his craving for the illustrated peach to the book itself, which he devoured in one gulp, with wide eyes and white knuckles. As he read, he kept getting hard, then stopping to wipe away tears before they could fall and leave spots on the pages, then getting hard again. By the time he turned the last page and slumped down on his pillow, it was almost time for breakfast. Left to him was perhaps half an hour of dark and silent privacy before he'd be forced to get up, go to school, and face the world as if this were just another ordinary day.

It wasn't enough time. It wasn't even enough time for him to digest what he'd just read, let alone to start getting over it. He might live to be forty and still never get over this. Now he wanted to indulge the tears and the arousal that he'd been fighting back all night – both at once, it didn't matter, he needed release. At the same time, loneliness was pressing down on him in the form of an intense need to be held, to feel someone else's warm skin against his own. Whose skin it was didn't matter.

Whose skin...

David got up and started to change into his uniform. The world he'd just left was burned onto the back of his eyes, making everything bright and unfamiliar, as if one half of him was still floating free somewhere in twentieth-century Italy. How could it seem so real when it was so far removed from his reality? He didn't know what it was like to be warmed by the sun, to ride a bike that wasn't bolted to the floor, to lie in the grass. He'd never seen an ocean, touched a piano, or even been outside. And he never would, of course. But suddenly these things seemed a natural part of him, as clearly as if they were his own memories, not just the words of some long-dead author. He hid the book at the bottom of his schoolbag. A 1980s hit parade was playing in his head, so that every step he took felt like a dance to a secret, ancient beat.

* * *

"Don't tell me: you finished it already."

This without looking up, as a breathless David was still braced in the doorway. The boy gabbled an affirmative. Colin pushed aside his work, took off his glasses, and slouched back in his chair to greet his visitor with a grin. "Well? What did you think?"

David shook his head. "I don't think I entirely understood it. I'd like to read it again, and any notes you could offer me would be very much appreciated. But you were right, I _adore_ it! I've never felt this way about a work of art before – I've never felt this way about anything before! I feel... I don't even know what I feel! But..."

"Whoa, slow down there, man." Colin motioned for David to sit, then reached under his desk. "Are you a sight for sore eyes. I was just about to take a little break. I know it's not quite booze o'clock yet, but time is relative, am I right?" He brought out a wine bottle and set it between them, then reached down again, this time retrieving two glasses. David wasn't planning to voice his reluctance, but it showed on his face, and Colin waved a hand just as if he had spoken. "No, no, none of that. Your classes are all finished for the day, right?"

"I mean... technically, but I have a lot of extra homework to catch up on tonight, or else my parents –"

"Shhh." Colin leaned across the desk and placed a finger on David's lips, making him giggle despite himself. "Forget that. You're young! It's a crime to keep you cooped up in that little pod every night, never having any fun. Besides, it sounds like we've got a lot to talk about." He poured out two glasses and slid one towards David. "So have a little drink, loosen up those screws about five notches, and tell me all about it."

All alcohol still tasted vile to David, but sitting here drinking on the D.L. with Colin like a couple of grown-up mates, that was sweet indeed. Sweeter still was the release of a full day's worth of pent-up emotion, as he launched into a disordered account of his feelings towards this strange book. Colin listened with close and patient attention, half-smiling while he nursed his drink. For once, David didn't care about impressing him with his insights. Right now, he just needed to share this experience with someone, to give voice to the awful doubts and impossible longings that had been stirred within him. The scenery! The secrecy! The peculiar intimacy between the lovers; the narrator's attention to detail when he obsessed over his beloved. It was all deeply, fundamentally, obscenely un-Martian. It spoke to David on a frequency he hadn't even known about until now. It was _glorious._

When the first rush of words was over, David fell into an abrupt silence. He was by no means ready to move on, but his mouth was dry from talking without pause and his words were, for the time being, all used up. He took a huge gulp of wine, then almost choked on it as Colin asked, quite casually: "Did it turn you on?"

David felt his whole face flush red as he sat there, wiping wine off his chin with the back of his hand. "I-I'm sorry?"

Much slower and clearer this time: _"Did it turn you on?"_ No, he hadn't misheard. Colin seemed to be enjoying his discomfort. "Don't be coy, we're all friends here. And I'll know if you're lying."

There was no denying that; Colin always could see right through him. David took another sip of wine and spoke quickly. "Well, I don't think there's any shame in admitting... I did find it... stimulating, in some places..."

"No prizes for guessing which places!" Colin cackled, before adding more kindly: "Of course there's no shame in that. It gets me going just thinking about it, so what chance do you stand? At your age, even VendiBots are positively erotic. What did you think of the father character?"

This was all coming much too quickly for David to process. _Gets me going just thinking about it,_ he repeated to himself. _Does that mean you're 'going' right now?_ They had talked before about sex as depicted in books and films and music, abstract sex, historical sex. It seemed quite a leap from that to comparing notes on their own personal arousal, let alone admitting to being aroused _right here right now,_ but Colin was acting like it was no big deal. Well, maybe it wasn't. David was probably overreacting, or misreading the situation; he did those a lot.

Oh, dear, he'd spaced out. Not for long, but Colin was a master at reading his mind – would it show on his face, what he'd been thinking about? David scrambled for an answer to the question he'd been asked a few seconds ago. "The father... ah, yes. Yes, I liked him."

"Yeah? What about his speech towards the end?"

If uncomfortable frankness was the order of the day, David figured, he may as well tell the truth. "We-ell, I liked that too. But I found it a bit unconvincing."

"Oh?" Colin raised his eyebrows.

"I mean, the boy violated the norms of his society, and his father supported him – encouraged him, even. Is that really entirely credible?"

Colin shrugged. "Do you think he was wrong? Should he have pushed his son back towards the straight and narrow, so to speak?"

"Oh, I don't know! I don't know if he _should_ have. But any father _would_ have, surely. I know that my father would act _very_ differently, if it were me."

"He would tell you off for dating boys?"

Flustered by the laugh in Colin's voice, David tried to backpedal out of this line of conversation. "Well, no, of course not. That would be absurd. I just meant... you know what I meant."

Colin put down his glass, leaned forward. "What did you mean, David?"

This sudden intensity forced David to look down at his hands and mumble his explanation: "If I were... abnormal... in some other way." During the silence that followed, when he dared to glance up at Colin's face, he saw no trace of anything but close and respectful attention. Reassured that he wasn't about to be scolded or laughed at, David forced himself to continue. "I-I don't know. I feel like... it's hard to explain. I know the characters in this book lived in a very different time. I know that what made them different then is the same thing that would make them normal today. But I can't help feeling that I'm still... like them, somehow. I'm... I'm different. It's just a different _kind_ of different."

All the amusement was gone from Colin's tone now. He sounded quiet, and kind, and serious. "How do you know you're different?"

"I just _am._ My parents have always known, I think. They've been trying to fix me for as long as I can remember, but..." David shook his head helplessly. "Now I can't help feeling that they're right. It's not normal to read books and keep secrets like this, is it? It might be okay by itself, but I worry that it's symptomatic of... something. I-I don't know what yet. I don't know anything." He paused. "Maybe I really am broken, after all." Another pause, and a strained laugh. "Sorry. You did ask."

With a sympathetic smile, Colin did what David didn't know he'd been hoping for until it happened: he reached over the desk and squeezed David's shoulder. "Never apologise for speaking your mind, buddy. I love hearing what you think. You're the only person I've ever met in this fucking place with anything intelligent to say."

This time, David's blush was out of pure happiness. He'd long since given up trying to respond with words when Colin flattered him like this, since he always ended up babbling and spoiling the moment. He wondered whether Colin knew how it made his heart race, how he treasured every compliment for days afterwards. Half of David hoped he knew, while the other half prayed that he didn't.

The warm, fuzzy feelings in his chest left him doubly unprepared for what Colin said next. "Do you like being different?"

David blinked. "I'm sorry?" This time he _must_ have misheard. "How could I like being a freak? Why would you even ask me that?"

"Ha! I don't think it's such a crazy question. I just told you how I like you for being different, after all." Colin winked. "And you loved the characters in the book. If you've got something in common with them, isn't there something pretty rad about that?"

"I... I guess so..."

"Did you bring the book with you?" Only now did Colin take his hand off David's shoulder in order to point at his bag. "Can I borrow it for a moment? There's something I'd like to show you."

When David retrieved it from under his textbooks, he paused to gaze again at the cover before handing it over. The peach had turned out to be a sex thing after all. Now that he'd deepened his theoretical acquaintance with this particular fruit, he longed more than ever to know how it would taste and smell and feel in the palm of his hand. He tried to imagine the texture of the flesh, soft and firm and wet, all at the same time.

Meanwhile, Colin had put his glasses back on and was flicking through the book, squinting for something in particular. "Ah-ha!" He jabbed a finger into the relevant page when he found it, pulled back his shoulders and puffed out his chest, going over the top to make David giggle. It worked. "'Nature has cunning ways," he read aloud, with mock solemnity, "of finding our weakest spot.'" He pushed the book away and knocked back the last of his wine. "What do you think of _that,_ my dude?"

David shrugged. He recognised it as part of the father's advice to his son which, more than anything, just made him feel sad. "I don't know. I suppose it's fairly pessimistic?"

"Is it!" There was a rare glint in Colin's eye. "You know, I don't know if I agree, buddy. Okay, sure, maybe it's a warning about watching out for our own personal weaknesses. But O.T.O.H... you know what it makes me think of?"

David didn't speak; only leaned forward in his chair, eyes wide and unblinking, glass in hand.

"It makes me think of MarsCorp's very own compatibility algorithms!" It was Colin's turn to get carried away. While he talked he poured himself a second glass and even topped up David's, which was only half-empty. "Listen, listen. MarsCorp, like any society, has a system of official and unofficial rules about what is and isn't okay in any given walk of life – take dating, for example – and we punish people who try to break those rules, right? But the fact that we have to forbid something in the first place means that _it wants to happen._ So it will happen anyway, whatever punishments are put in place, and it will keep happening as long as human nature remains unchanged." Colin paused to point meaningfully at David, then at himself, then back at David. "Incompatibles fall in love. They always have and they always will. Blues fall in love with Oranges. Hell, department heads fall in love with interns! On Earth, in every century and every country where homosexuality was forbidden, even on pain of death, women disguised themselves as men in order to marry their girlfriends. And most of them never got found out. That is MarsCorp's weakest spot, the weakest spot of any society: the spot where it pits itself against nature. It always loses in the end. And that – is – _beautiful!"_

"Beautiful," David repeated, scarcely more than a breath.

Colin poked him in the chest. "Yes! And that's what you are, with your offbeat ways and your outsider's heart; you're a force of nature. Your parents know that, and it scares them, but you don't need to be scared of the way you're made. Just like this book, David, just like any love that flourishes in the face of convention – that is a miracle! _You_ are a miracle! Do you see what I'm trying to say here?"

In the silence that followed, in order to buy himself time before responding, David took a sip of his drink. Then he found that he still needed more time, so he kept sipping until the glass was empty. He put it back on the desk with a soft 'clink.' Colin was staring at him.

Slowly, David nodded. "Yes," he said, with a small smile. "Yes. I think I understand."

Colin broke back into a grin. He must have taken off his glasses again at some point; he looked younger without them, less imposing. "I knew you would," he said. "You're a smart one. Not just smart – you're special. You see things differently from everyone else. And that's something to be cherished, believe me."

Shyly, David asked, "So are you... different... too?"

"Good question." The grin turned conspiratorial. "Maybe I am. You could almost say we're, like – differently the same."

David sat quietly, turning over the past few minutes in his mind. What Colin had said was absolutely against regulations; any well-behaved Martian would be outraged. Even to talk about love between incompatibles was in bad taste, but to go on to call such a violation _beautiful_... it was all heresy. And it was true. Which, David also knew, made them both heretics.

"Ah, so it goes without saying," Colin added, as if it were an afterthought, "best not to repeat any of this to anyone, okay, buddy?"

David nodded again.

* * *

By the time David got home, all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep. The previous night was catching up with him, and the strange thoughts that had been racing through his head all day were taking their toll, too. Unfortunately, his parents interpreted his exhaustion as sullenness, which led to a twenty minute lecture about his attitude, poor health, and other chronic failings. David knew there was nothing he could do to escape this once it started, so he stood with his hands folded respectfully behind his back and made apologetic noises until released to his room.

Now with two nights' worth of accumulated homework, he hunched over his desk and forced himself to focus, only stopping when the words in front of his eyes started swarming like static. Then he stripped off his uniform and staggered straight into bed. His pyjamas were where he'd left them that morning, folded on his pillow, but he pushed them off the side of the mattress and was asleep and dreaming before they hit the floor.

Emerging out of warm and welcoming darkness, David found himself lying on hard, uneven ground. His eyes and mouth filled with dust the moment he opened them, but no air came into his throat. He tried to cough, but his lungs were dry. His clothes were covered in rust-red sand; more of it poured from his hair down his back when he sat up to look around.

He was perched on a clifftop, like the one in the book, except it was nothing like the one in the book. There was no ocean, no green Italian countryside. The Martian desert stretched far beneath him, while the sun glared down from a black and silent sky. Colin Denham was sitting a few feet away. There was a box open on his crossed legs, inside which his hands were busy doing something unseen. He looked up at David and nodded. "Turn around. You can see home from here."

David turned back to the cliff's edge. He looked up and saw Earth in the sky, many times bigger than the speck it normally was. "Not that," came Colin's voice from behind him; "forget that. Look down there."

Obediently, David lowered his gaze. Down there in the desert, halfway to the horizon, was a building. Though he'd never seen it from outside before, he knew with the confidence of dream-logic that it was the MarsCorp base. It was round and white and delicious-looking, gleaming clean like a pearl in the dirt thanks to the forcefield tower.

"It's ready," said Colin. Was he was talking about the base, or the thing in the box, or – ? "You have to do it now."

"Do I have to?" David still didn't know what they were meant to be discussing; all he knew was that this urgency made him uneasy. "Maybe it's not ready yet. It's so early. They told me to just wait a little longer. Wouldn't it be safer to just wait a little longer?"

"Trust me. It may be early, but that's better. You have to act now if you want it to be perfect."

Even as David sat and stared down at the base, it seemed to be succumbing to some kind of rot. Fissures started running up its sides from the ground, connecting and forming pits in its shining surface. The forcefield tower buckled and caved in part of the main dome, which started to sink slowly into the sand.

When David turned around to face Colin, the box was gone, and he was sitting closer than before. He put an arm around David's shoulders and squeezed. "Don't be so nervous, buddy."

David tried to breathe, but there was no air. How were they talking with no air? It was probably something obvious he'd overlooked; best not to ask and look stupid. "I'm not _nervous_ ," he protested. Colin's arm moved down to rest around his waist. "I'm fine. I'm fine! I'm ready. I'm... going to do it."

Now Colin's broad chest was pressed against his back, both arms wrapped around his middle. David felt hands under his top, touching his skin, brushing the dust from his hips. And Colin's mouth, an inch from his ear, close enough to _feel_ the words: "Then do it. Did you finish your homework first?"

"No-o. I'm sorry. I tried, but I was so _sleepy..._ will you tell everyone it wasn't my fault? Please?" David hated the wheedling note in his own voice. He tried to sound more like an adult, reasoning, "They might listen to you. Nobody listens to me."

Colin laughed softly into his neck. "Hmm. Since you ask so nicely, I'm sure we can figure something out."

They sat together and watched as the ruins of the base disappeared into the ground. Colin whispered, "Look at that. Everything you've ever known, gone forever. Isn't that kinda hot?"

David giggled nervously and pretended not to know what he meant. One of Colin's hands slipped downwards, over his stomach, over his belt, to rest on the crotch of his trousers. And David was totally hard, undeniably hard, _painfully_ hard, and Colin could feel it – _was_ feeling it.

Suddenly David understood that fruit knows when it is ripe, and feels tension when it is ready to be picked, tension to the point of agony if it is left to wait on the branch. He understood it because he was experiencing it, a need growing in his skin and bones and heart that he could never fulfil by himself. He could only sit there and wait and wonder, with Colin groping him through his trousers and the Earth suspended, huge and ominous, in the sky.

When he woke up, it was still dark. Nearly four a.m., according to the glowing face of the alarm clock on his desk. David lay rigid, trying to figure out why he was feeling the coolness of the sheets against his bare skin – had he gotten undressed in his sleep..? No, that was it, he'd been too tired to change into his pyjamas when he went to bed. Now he was wide awake and aroused with his heart pounding in his ears, staring into the darkness, trying to commit every detail of his dream to memory before it could slip away.

Up until now, he'd mostly had ordinary Martian dreams about doing typical, everyday Martian things. He'd read that Earthling dreams tended to be surreal and confusing, but until now he'd never appreciated how jarring it would be to hallucinate something like this: so impossible, so vivid, so disturbing. Did this mean he was really becoming more like an Earthling? Was he sick? His parents would definitely think so if they ever found out. Or would this dream turn out to be prophetic? He recalled his vision of the collapsing base with a shudder. Better to be sick than right.

As for the rest of it... well. He would never look at Colin the same way again. Maybe his teenage hormones were just taking their strange conversation of the previous day as an excuse to play tricks on his subconscious – but even as he thought it, David knew that it was useless trying to kid himself. Whatever this was, wherever it had come from, it went deep. How long had this been ignoring it? Well, no matter; he wouldn't be able to ignore it any longer.

He tried to recall if he'd been able to feel dream-Colin's erection against his back. That was the kind of detail he would like to remember. It meant nothing – nothing had happened anyway – but he wanted to be wanted, even in his own unconscious mind. He wanted to be able to _imagine_ that someone as handsome and successful and popular as Colin, in some surreal otherworld, in just one parallel reality out of billions, might press his hard cock against David for a few seconds. Dammit, if he was going to have an erotic dream about the Head of Science, why couldn't it be a normal, straightforward Martian sex dream where they just had sex? Indoors, in bed, in a comfortable and mutually pleasurable situation? Maybe it was just too wrong, too _unwholesome,_ as his parents would say. Maybe if he wanted to go back to normal sex dreams then he would have to go back to fancying normal people, as opposed to iconoclastic perverts over twice his age.

Well, fuck that. David felt a swelling of rebellious pride as he remembered Colin's speech: this was the way he was made, and for it to flourish in the face of all the odds, there was something beautiful in that. He was different, and that was a good thing. He was different like the characters in the book. He was different like Colin. But.

_But._

What would Colin think if he found out? He really had no right to be offended, after the things he said yesterday, but maybe he would laugh. Maybe he'd distance himself, say he'd only been joking or talking hypothetically, order David to toe the line and find a nice boy his own age. Maybe he'd get that weird glinty look and call it 'neat' and change the subject.

Was there any chance at all that he might – it was difficult even to think in words – he might reciprocate?

'Gets me going just thinking about it,' that was what Colin said. Was he hard on the other side of that desk? Had he – tremble at the very idea – had he _ever_ gotten a hard-on while David was in the room? There would be no way to tell; it all depended on what he liked. Based on their conversation, David suspected his interests lay somewhat outside the mainstream, but that could mean almost anything. All there was to go on was that he had enjoyed the book. So, which parts of it turned him on? David knew he had missed his chance to ask outright; there had been a moment, right after the subject first reared its head, when he could have gotten away with it, but now he would never find the courage. Maybe Colin would bring it up again at their next meeting and save him the torment. Was it the food-fucking that excited him? The narrator's descriptions of his lover's clothes and careless manner? Maybe he wanted to be that narrator. Maybe he just wanted to be seventeen again.

Maybe he liked it because it was about breaking the rules. That seemed to fit. Or maybe, just maybe, what he liked most was the idea of a teenage boy falling helplessly, worshipfully in love with an older man.

David tiptoed out of bed, finding his way in the dark to turn on his lamp. He had a few hours before school in which to finish the homework that was still spread out on his desk. He looked over it and hesitated. Then, making up his mind, he took out his private notebook and, in a hand unsteadied by cold and by something he didn't dare to name, he wrote on a new page:

_When peaches are ripe and ready for plucking,_

_Boys of almost-sixteen are ready for fucking._


End file.
